Freefall

“What the hell are you doing out here with my father?”

Sophie bristled at his suspicious tone, his narrowed gaze, and slipped her hand from William’s grasp. “I saw him at the top of the steps leading to the beach. I was afraid he would tumble down. But I suppose if you don’t mind your father wandering around in the dark by himself, next time I see him I’ll mind my own business.”

“That’s impossible! There’s no way in hell he could unlock the doors without tripping the alarm.”

“You’re right,” she snapped. “I’m lying, you caught me. The truth is, I decided to wake up a frail old man and take him for a stroll around the garden at midnight, just for kicks.”

“Stop fighting,” William said suddenly, his voice sharp and clear. “Peter, I’m tired. I’m not in the mood for any more of your nonsense. I’m going to bed.”

He walked into the house, leaving them gaping after him. Tom raked a hand through his dark hair, messing it even more. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. It’s just been a hell of a day. I fell asleep in the study and when I woke up, I went to check on him before going to bed and panicked when I found him gone.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Look, I need to make sure he’s settled back in bed. Will you wait here for me?”

She studied him. “No. My feet are freezing. But I’ll wait for you in the kitchen.”

She was heating milk on the stove when he came in ten minutes later looking tired and dispirited.

“Would you like some hot cocoa?” she asked.

He leaned against the work island. “I haven’t had hot cocoa made the old-fashioned way since my mother died.”

“It’s much better this way.” It had always been her and Shelly’s comfort treat, something they shared on the nights when Sharon forgot to come home. She had been touched to find all the ingredients in a cupboard by the stove, as if Shelly used them often.

“It should only take a moment for the milk to heat. Is everything okay with your father?”

“Yes. He fell asleep as soon as I tucked him back in his bed. I can’t for the life of me figure out how he got out. His room has a double lock and an alarm that’s supposed to go off whenever the door is opened. He managed to work both locks and disengage the alarm. I suppose I’ll have to figure out a better system.”

“Does he do this often?”

“Not so much anymore. After he was first diagnosed, Peter and Shelly used to have to hide all the car keys or he would just take off and drive around all night. They wouldn’t have the first idea where to find him. That’s when we hired Maura to look after him.”

“It must be terrible for him.”

His shrug rippled the soft navy cotton of his shirt. “Strange as it seems, it’s been a little easier the more his disease progresses. The first few years were tough but he doesn’t really have an awareness anymore about what’s happening to him.”

He paused and turned his attention to her. “Look, I am sorry about snapping at you out there. I was acting on raw fear. I don’t know what might have happened if you hadn’t gone to his rescue. Thank you. It was lucky you happened to see him out there.”

“I heard him first. He was weeping, Tom. Horrible, wrenching sobs. He thought I was Shelly and he said something about seeing Peter in his room. He was out looking for him.”

“He thinks I’m Peter half the time. You heard him. Maura and I tried to explain about the accident but I don’t know how much is getting through. Maybe it’s better this way.”

How terrible it must be for Thomas to lose a little more of his father each day. With Peter’s death, the responsibility of caring for his father now fell completely on his shoulders.

She longed to comfort him but didn’t know how—and she wasn’t sure if he would welcome her efforts anyway—so she busied herself with beating the cocoa to a froth.

When it was finished, she poured a mug for him and one for herself and the two of them sipped their hot drinks in silence for a few moments.

Thomas finally broke the silence. “I saw your work on Costa Rica in Go! magazine this month. You really brought the country and the people to life with your photos.”

A compliment? From Thomas? Pleased and embarrassed—and unsure how to react to the unexpected comment—she focused on the murky cocoa in her mug with its swirls of lighter froth. “Thank you,” she murmured. “It’s a beautiful place. One of my favorites.”

“I imagine you have many favorites.”

She glanced up and found him watching her out of those silvery blue eyes. She managed to smile despite the little tug of awareness in her stomach. “It changes all the time. Usually, wherever I’m hanging my gear is my favorite.”

“Do you ever get tired of the wandering life?”

Once more she wasn’t sure how to answer him. She had found incredible success at her chosen field and she did love the thrill and adventure of discovering new places.

She enjoyed her life but she had never been able to imagine herself spending the rest of it constantly moving around like Sharon, never content to spend more than a week or two in one zip code.

If she thought about the future at all, eventually she saw herself settling down, maybe working for a newspaper or teaching photography at a liberal arts college somewhere.

All that had changed with Thomas’s late-night phone call to her hotel in Morocco. Now she had three children to think about.

“I’ve never known anything else,” she finally answered his question. “But I’m going to learn for the children’s sake.”

Thomas wanted to argue with her again about her complete conviction that she was staying here to care for Ali and the twins but he bit back the words. Not now, when they had achieved this tentative, fragile peace here in the stillness of the night.

She had rescued his father and it seemed churlish to pay her back by more bickering. As she had said earlier in the evening, there would be time to discuss the future when things settled down.

Besides, the few hours of sleep she must have found snuggling in Peter and Shelly’s room with the children didn’t look to be enough. She gave a huge yawn suddenly, then blinked at him, a faint, appealing brush of color on her fair cheeks.

“Sorry. It’s not the company, I promise.”

“Don’t worry about it. Get some rest. Come on, I’ll walk up with you and help carry the children back to their own beds.”

He followed her up the stairs, trying like hell not to notice the way the faded material of her jeans hugged her very shapely rear end. At Shelly and Peter’s master suite, they found the children still cuddled together under the covers, Ali in the middle with a twin on either side.

He remembered how Sophie had looked sleeping peacefully surrounded by children when he had checked on them earlier in the evening. She had made a soft, innocent picture, her gold-blond hair tangled on the pillow in a wild, sensuous cloud.

“I don’t think we should move them,” Sophie said quietly at his side. “If they can find some comfort here together, I don’t see the harm in it. I’ll sleep over there on the sofa in case they should wake.”

“There are a half-dozen guest rooms in this mausoleum where you would be far more comfortable.”

“The sofa looks fine. I’ve slept on worse. Anyway, I’d hate for them to wake up and not know where to find me.”

She smiled softly at him and for one astonishing moment, Thomas was overwhelmed by a wild urge to catch that smile with his mouth, to taste that smudge of cocoa at the corner of her lips.

He almost leaned forward but checked himself just in time, appalled at his idiocy where Sophie was concerned. “Good night,” he muttered stiffly, then stalked down the hall.

No, it definitely wasn’t going to work having her here. The sooner she figured that out, the better for both of them.

Chapter 4

His to-do list had taken on a life of its own.

Tom stared grimly down at the handwritten notes he had begun making soon after Peter’s death. He was up to a half-dozen pages of tasks and counting. If he started this very moment and worked twenty-four hours a day, he was afraid it would still take him several weeks to tie up all his brother’s loose ends.

During his three-year tenure as president and CEO of Canfield Investments, Peter had been fiercely aggressive, substantially expanding the family’s financial interests. It was going to take Tom weeks to unravel all the tangled threads.

Weeks of paperwork and meetings and conference calls. He couldn’t imagine anything worse.

Overwhelmed and disheartened by the job ahead of him, Tom gazed out the wide French doors of Peter’s ground-floor office. In one of the peninsula’s notoriously mercurial weather shifts, the unseasonable warmth of the last few days had vanished like the tide, leaving behind stormy gray skies and thick banks of coastal fog interspersed with heavy rains.

Even with the inclement weather, he couldn’t deny the view through the rain-streaked window was still appealing. The gardens of Seal Point were lush year-round thanks to the efforts of Manny Reyes and his sons, who had taken care of the grounds as long as Thomas could remember.

In the steel-gray light and slanting rain, the flowers burned with saturated color—purples and blues and reds that waved on the stiff sea breeze. He had always found peace here, even when he was a wild, rebellious teenager butting heads constantly with his father.

He frowned suddenly as something disturbed the pleasing scene. What on earth? A parade of umbrellas darted through the gardens, bobbing and weaving through the plants.

He stared in disbelief. What was Sophie doing, dragging the children outside on such a grim day? It was definitely her, though, under a bright yellow umbrella and leading a precession of smaller umbrellas like a mother duck with her babies.

What kind of lunacy was she up to this time? He stood at the window frowning as he studied them. He had his answer soon enough when Sophie and her entourage trotted into the poolhouse and emerged a few moments later without their colorful umbrellas but wearing terry-cloth robes and bathing suits.

He watched dumbstruck as all four of them—Sophie, Ali, Zach and Zoe—ran for the pool then leaped in, heedless of the rain pockmarking the surface.

She was crazy. She had to be.

Temperatures were probably only in the low fifties. It was a better day for curling up with a good book by the fireplace than for splashing around in a swimming pool.

The pool was heated, he had to admit, at a comfortable eighty degrees. Regardless, he still couldn’t imagine how she thought it would be good for the children to be outside in this rain. All he needed were three sick kids on his hands when Sophie decided to leave.

They were all going to catch their deaths.

This was just like Sophie, he fumed, thrusting open the door and marching outside.

She lived only for the moment and never bothered to think through the consequences of her actions, never thought about who would suffer those consequences.

While she had been flitting around the world taking her pictures, she likely had never given a single thought for her sister, or how Shelly might have worried herself sick sometimes about her twin traveling the globe alone.

It might be fine and dandy to take foolish risks when it was her own safety at stake. But she was supposed to be caring for three innocent children here—children who were ultimately his responsibility. He couldn’t sit by and let them suffer because of her thoughtlessness.

He hadn’t thought to grab an umbrella and the hard slap of the rain did nothing to cool his anger. It suddenly seemed terribly unfair of her to force him into the role of the bad guy. With each step, his temper flared higher until by the time he reached the pool, he was surprised steam wasn’t sizzling off his skin with each raindrop.

The delighted smiles of the children when they saw him didn’t help matters. They looked more light-hearted than he’d seen them all week. Instead of calming him, their obvious delight in this little adventure only added fuel to his ire.

“Hi, Uncle Tommy,” Zoe called out. “Want to go swimming with us? It’s fun!”

“No,” he said shortly. “I think everybody needs to go back inside and dry out.”

“But we just got in!” Zach protested. “We needed exercise. We’ve been cooped up all day. Sophie said so.”

“You can exercise inside where it’s warm and dry.”

“We won’t stay out here long,” Sophie said. “Just long enough to burn off a little energy.”

At her words he glanced over at her, treading water with Ali. Big mistake. She wore what on anyone else would probably be considered a perfectly respectable one-piece black bathing suit. But Sophie somehow made it look sleek and sensual. Even from the edge of the pool he could see her slim, curvy body straining the material of the suit.

If possible, he was even more attracted to her than he had been a decade ago, he realized with considerable chagrin.

She had been so young then, just coming into her beauty. The years had stamped strength and self-assurance onto her features, had turned a very lovely girl into a stunning woman.

He hated his own weakness where she was concerned. She had rejected him, made it quite clear she regretted their brief passion. Why else would she have left so suddenly?

And what kind of fool could still hunger for a woman who treated him like a pair of shoes she decided didn’t fit after all?

“In case it’s escaped your attention, it’s raining.”

She laughed. “Yes, I believe we’re aware of that. If we weren’t before, your drenched clothes probably would have given us a good clue. But we figured, what’s a little rain when we were just going to get wet out here in the swimming pool anyway? Right, guys?”

The children agreed with her, Ali with a quiet nod and the twins with giggles he hadn’t heard in days.

The sweetness of the sound made him bite back his sharp retort. He didn’t want to fight with her in front of the children. They didn’t need to see contention between the two people they had left. They were already uncertain, uneasy, about their future.

He gazed at them paddling in the water—if not happily then at least with more enthusiasm than they had shown toward anything else since their parents’ deaths.

Part of him wanted to let them continue to splash and play, to work off some of their tangled emotions in the water. But he knew he couldn’t jeopardize their health and safety just because they seemed to be having a good time.

He was trying his damnedest to think like a parent and he couldn’t imagine his own parents ever letting him or Pete swim in the rain on a day like this.

“Time to get out.” He used the same tone of voice he would with a recalcitrant subordinate under his command. “Everybody. Come on, time to get back into your robes and head inside. You can swim tomorrow if it stops raining.”

Unused to that stern tone from him, the children looked to Sophie for guidance. Her gaze flickered toward them and then back to him, cool challenge in her eyes.

“We’ll be out in a few moments. No more than fifteen, I promise.”

Why did she have to be so difficult? This would be much easier if she didn’t insist on being stubborn about having her way. Maybe it would be better if she left sooner rather than later. As long as she decided to stick around, he feared she would fight him at every turn.

He wanted to argue with her but he was hamstrung by the pleading in the children’s eyes. Thomas groaned at himself. He was going to have to become a hell of a lot tougher if he was going to do a halfway decent job as a father-figure.

But maybe the week after their parents died wasn’t the best time to be a hardass.

“Fifteen minutes, then you all need to go inside the house to get warm. Sophie, I would like to speak with you in the library when you’re finished here.”

The nod she gave him in reply was just as curt as his own voice had been.

“Are you sure you don’t want to swim, Uncle Tommy?” Zach asked eagerly. “You’re already wet. All you need is a swimming suit.”

Despite his annoyance with Sophie, he managed a smile for his nephew. “Another time, bud. I have work to do.”

The sooner Sophie decided to hit the road again, the better for all of them, he thought again as he marched back into the house, his shoes sloshing with every step.

Once she was flitting around the world with her cameras, he and the children would be able to establish a routine that didn’t involve afternoon swims in the middle of a rainstorm or whatever other crazy scheme she might come up with.

And once she left, he should have no problem shaking this ridiculous attraction seething under his skin.

His temper still smoldered and hissed long after he changed into dry clothes and returned to the library Peter used as an office. He tried to immerse himself in the piles of work demanding his attention but he felt too prickly to make much headway.

Instead, he watched the four of them play in the pool through the rain-streaked glass. They seemed to be involved in a game of tag that had all of them grinning as they darted through the water.

Sophie seemed to be spending an inordinately long time being It, he noticed. She did little but pursue the children, her lithe body cutting through the water with grace and agility.

He couldn’t hear them from inside but he was certain Ali and the twins were all laughing, genuinely enjoying themselves.

They were acting like children, for the first time since he’d had to break the news to them about Peter and Shelly. Despite his best efforts, since that day he hadn’t been able to coax more than those heartbreaking, sad little half smiles out of them.

Just as the clock ticked down the fifteen minutes she had said they would remain outside, he watched her gather the children around and say something to them, then the four of them climbed out of the pool and rushed toward the poolhouse for robes and umbrellas.

A few moments later they headed for the house, their faces bright and rosy—from the cold or the exercise, he couldn’t tell.

With a frown, Thomas turned back to the papers spread across the desk and pretended to concentrate while the ormolu clock on the mantel ticked down the moments.

Thirty-three minutes later—not that he was counting or anything—a knock sounded at the door.

Without waiting for a reply, Sophie opened it and walked into the office dressed in jeans and a soft rose-colored sweater, her hair captured in a still-damp ponytail.

His reaction to her was as instant and powerful as it was unwelcome.

She made a big show of giving an elaborate curtsy. “I believe you rang for me, my lord.”

He glared at her pert tone. That was exactly her problem. Sophie thought she could laugh her way through life, that the world was one big adventure created only for her.

Ten years ago she had glowed with enthusiasm for life, wanting to taste every delicious morsel of excitement the world had to offer. She had been hungry to explore, to embrace, to experience.

Had he been just another of those little adventures of hers? The thought didn’t sit well with him. Not well at all.

“I’d like to know something. Can you tell me how in the hell you have survived on your own all these years with absolutely not one smidgeon of anything resembling common sense?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Dumb luck?”

“I believe it. What were you thinking, Sophie?”

With complete disregard for the paperwork spread across it, she perched on the edge of the desk, far too close for his comfort.

He was furious with himself for the instinctive way he leaned back—and even more so when he thought he saw a hint of amusement play at the corner of her mouth, as if she enjoyed making him uncomfortable.

“I’m assuming this lecture has to do with our little swim party.”

“This has to do with you not giving a thought to the consequences of your actions, as usual. This has to do with the complete irresponsibility of taking three young children out in a cold, hard rain to swim without giving a single thought to their health and welfare.”

“Are you finished?” she asked, her voice icy.

He paused long enough to look at her and realized with some shock that she was angry, too. He had never seen her mad. Amused, entranced, aroused, but never mad.

He sat back in Peter’s chair. “Not even close.”

“Too bad. You’ve had your say. Now I get a turn. You’re completely wrong, Thomas. Believe it or not, I did consider the wisdom of taking them out in the rain and I did consider the possibility they might catch cold.”

“But you took the risk anyway.”

“I took the risk. And it was worth every moment. You were watching them. I saw you in here standing at the window. You must have seen the same thing I did. They were laughing. Smiling and laughing and behaving like children instead of quiet little wraiths.”

He couldn’t deny the truth of her words. “Yes, I saw them. But they won’t be laughing when they all are sick in bed with pneumonia. What will you do if they get sick?”

“I’ll make them chicken soup and tuck them into their beds and read them every story in the house. But I’d rather see them laugh and splash and catch cold than shrivel away into quiet, spiritless little mice.”

All right, so maybe he had been a little more angry than the situation demanded. Perhaps she hadn’t been completely irresponsible after all. He sighed heavily, reluctant to admit he might have overreacted. “Couldn’t you have found another way to raise their spirits?”

“Maybe. But that was the first thing that came to me. They were restless and upset this morning. I don’t know if it was the rain or reality finally sinking in that Peter and Shelly are truly gone but they needed something to distract them, some way to work off that snarl of emotions. Swimming seemed like a good idea. But perhaps next time I’ll try to think of something else. Jumping on the beds, maybe, or timing which of us can slide down the bannister the fastest.”

He shuddered, imagining the mayhem she could wreak if let loose. Sophie only gave one of those low, sexy laughs of hers he remembered so well, one of those laughs that always used to strum through him.

“I’m doing my best, Tom,” she said, sobering. “I’m sorry for everyone’s sake that I’m not better at this, that I don’t really know what I’m doing with the children. But I am trying.”

For how long?

The question burned in his mind but he didn’t voice it. How long before she packed up her gear and caught a plane away from Seal Point, leaving the children with yet another loss to struggle through?

He couldn’t ask, not when she gazed at him with such earnest entreaty in her green eyes.

“Fine,” he said tersely. “But no more swimming in the middle of a rainstorm.”

She gave him a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain.”

“That’s lieutenant.”

“Right. Sorry.” She smiled and for a moment the usual tension that writhed between them was gone.

He wanted to bask in that smile for a while and forget the past and all his unanswered questions.

But he also wanted to think he wasn’t quite the idiot he’d been a decade ago. He forced himself to lean back farther in Peter’s leather chair. “How are the children now?” he asked with studied casualness.

“Grand. At least they were when I left them. Mrs. Cope popped a big batch of buttery popcorn and they’re eating it while they watch an old movie. Swaddled in plenty of warm blankets, I might add.”

“Now that sounds like just the thing for a stormy Saturday afternoon like this one.”

She studied him for a moment and he wondered if she could tell the effort it cost him to pretend indifference to her. “Why don’t you join us, Tom? The children would be thrilled to make room for you on the couch. You look as if you could use a break.”